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Three years ago I would wake up with Squid pressed up against me, the two of us wrapped up in blankets, to clamber out of bed for work, or to make coffee while cleaning and preparing food for the night or day, or whenever. I’d commute to work, spend my day working for someone else, and then return home to continue whatever work hadn’t been finished that morning or the evening before.

Now I wake up with Squid pressed against Pepita, her figure close, but not pressed up against me. I clamber out of bed for work, or on days off lay close, sometimes pressed against each other to eventually roll out of bed. Prepare coffee or make the trip to the dispensary, free coffee and a joint to return home and light a candle, light the joint, and sit in the dining room with music low to fill the silence that sits like a layer of dust, but hanging just above our heads. I sit in my wooden chair and watch the clouds move out the sliding glass door, past her face, smiling at me.

“You centaur” She says with a grin spreading from ear to ear.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re like a centaur sometimes, with your face, and the beard….”

Like this:

Now that I’m here in this place, with her, with Squid.
Watching rain through a trees branches,
from a wooden chair by a sliding glass door
something similar, somewhere new
Letting my mind wander to nothing in particular at all
Pepita, bread, bialy, dinner, chicken, life
swish swash rumble tumble hum hum buzz, swish~
The sweet sound of laundry
Fresh skin for a new day, hour, moment,
But it eludes before it can build.
Standing, reaching
Click the lock
Now hoist
Heave the heavy door aside and hang my back and head into the air
Arching back, head up to taste
Lovely springs life returns
How many dinners will I eat by this door?
How many more
With her
Here

Like this:

Ka, I read once, twice, three times now it seems – probably more – is like fate, but more. Something brimming with purpose and place. Leading those who are struck by it, marked, to where they should be. Where they will be. Where they already have been. I’ve been walking this circle for a good long while like a gunslinger looking for a tower. Aim with your eyes, shoot with your mind, not with your hand. I am the gunslinger, but I gave up my guns. I no longer need them to find that tower, made of black stone among roses so red blood stands out on their silken petals. I no longer have need for those sandalwood grips that hold the keys to doors on their base. For a moment I thought I did not need the tower, but now I know differently, feel I know differently. Ka has made that clear. I will always need the tower, I will always need to climb it, to open the heavy door at the top of the winding stair and step through its blinding, brilliant light. But now, among a hundred or a thousand twists and turns and start agains I have remembered the face of my father. My father who loves me well. The face of my father, whom I thought I had remembered all this time. I have remembered the voice of my mother, who has taught me to be like the stones that hold that monstrous thing into the heavens. I will drag no one into this world to walk with me, to die for my quest. My name may not be Roland, but I am the last of my kind.
I do not kill with my gun. I kill with my heart.

Like this:

Something is swallowing me whole
Deep, dark, little ball of something
Stirring in my gut
Yearning to speak words
To communicate
But the thing that lives above
In the musty attic with a blonde straw roof
Tells it to hush as it neglects to blink
Staring at the hands of a clock
With a crack in the glass
Hands stuck like children
Cookie jars
The deep, dark, little ball of something
Musters up a sound
And the half burnt twins that live between the two
Help to push the sound to life
With raspy tones
And wheezing gasps
That deep, dark, little ball of something
Just has to find the words

Like this:

Those felt
Like the only real lips
To have ever been pressed
Firmly against mine
As mine pressed firmly back
Hands over shoulders, or around
To the small of the back
Whos hands where
I lost track
Lips pressed
Tight
Knowing we have to part
I jot down a few words
Expecting the same
Expecting them to be meaningless
To another name, which I haven’t decided
But they didn’t
You read them, gazed them, pulled them into your heart
Let them circulate through veins
Felt the weight between your muscle and bone
And you carried it
With you
Away

Like this:

We’ve bound ourselves together with words and sacred rituals we could never fully understand.She cleans my wounds.
But now, now we have nothing to say.She places stitches in my broken skin.
Because those rites have been abolished, broken, and thrown about the room.She pulls me to my feet.
Now I have nothing to say.She pushes me back down.
Or write.She strips away my bandages.
Now I have nothing.She ties me to the stake.
Now I burn.

Like this:

You’re a drug addict.
Though they are minor.
Cancer, cannabis
Stress
You’re addicted to the things
That slowly
Slowly are killing you
Physically
Mentally
You haven’t gotten stronger,
Only more caloused.
Wake up.
It’s time to get sober.